


alone with our changing minds

by bringyouhometoo



Series: never saw you coming [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode: c02e016 A Favor in Kind, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 06:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18162542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/pseuds/bringyouhometoo
Summary: “Caleb Widogast,” Jester says slowly, willing her voice to remain even for just a little while longer. “I believe you are fucking with me.”“I would never fuck with you, Jester Lavorre,” he says, so solemn and straight-faced that it almost catches her out. “You know we don't have your sense of humour in Rexxentrum, maybe it is just getting lost in translation.”A missing moment between Episodes 16 and 17 - Jester and Caleb and a night-time conversation.





	alone with our changing minds

**Author's Note:**

> WELL.
> 
> OKAY LET ME JUST SAY FIRST OF ALL: I am currently, as of right now, about to start Episode 17 for the first time. THAT'S RIGHT, I'M OUT HERE POSTING FIC AND I'VE ONLY SEEN SIXTEEN EPISODES. 
> 
> So things may not be entirely canon compliant! Please don't tell me anything spoilery! Just pretend it's April 2018 and they've just got back from their first quest for the Gentleman and Caleb and Jester held hands when he looked into the Beacon and now they have some DOWNTIME FOR A FEW DAYS and you know what that means?? It's missing moments time, baby!
> 
> For [Christine Elsinorerose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsinorerose/profile), as always.

Jester can’t sleep. 

Beau has been snoring for hours and Yasha has….Yasha’d, it’s the early hours of the morning, the whole Leaky Tap seems quiet and still, and Jester can’t sleep.

She draws for a little while  - the Nein in their boats, Nott covered in ash, Fjord with two beautiful curling tusks, Beau and Caleb reading the diary together. Caleb standing in front of the beacon, his hand outstretched.

(She also draws herself pulling Fjord out of the river, water running down his shirt and over her arms. Well. It’s not like the Traveler  _ minds _ .)

The moon is bright in the sky, casting long shadows across the bedroom. Jester finishes her drawings and puts her journal away. She’s still not tired, in fact she’s a little hungry now that she’s been awake so long after dinner - there are some old bear claws in her bag, still, and she pulls one out with a faint smile tugging at her lips. 

The bear claw is  _ really fucking stale.  _ Her smile fades.

Maybe, though, if she can find someone down in the tavern to get her some milk, she could soften it up a little. It’s still  _ good,  _ still tastes like cinnamon, like home, but one bite in and her mouth is already so dry she has to force the pastry down.

“I’m just going downstairs, Beau, okay? You keep on sleeping, please don’t wake up - “ As Jester steps over the creaking floorboard by the door, Beau grunts in her sleep. “ _ Shit. _ Sorry.”

She heads downstairs, bear claws tucked into one pocket.

The tavern is deserted; the last few stragglers have made their way home, the door to the kitchen is firmly closed, and Jester is alone.

Her stomach is still growling, though, and there  _ is  _ a half-full pitcher of honey wine just sitting there on the bar. She eyes it thoughtfully, chewing her lip. What harm can it do, right? She can just heal herself if it makes her too sick.

A faint  _ meow  _ startles Jester out of her thoughts, and she looks down to see a lean ginger tomcat butting his head against her leg. 

“Oh, hello, Frumpkin!” Jester beams, squatting down and holding out her hand for the cat. “Are you hungry, too, did mister  _ grumpy  _ forget to feed you before he fell asleep, is that it?”

Frumpkin butts his head against her leg again, pushing her backwards. Jester laughs.

“What is it that you want, hmm? I don’t think Caleb would want me to feed you any pastries… Well, maybe we just won’t tell him.”

Frumpkin pushes her back into the room, purring insistently. Jester frowns down at him. “You’re being really bossy… But, okay, I can go sit down.” She lets him lead her to a table in the corner, next to the stone basin fixed to the wall that joins the tavern with the kitchen. 

_ The basin! _

Jester smacks herself on the forehead. “I am a very stupid tiefling,” she says conversationally, grinning down at where Frumpkin is now sitting at her feet, head cocked to one side as if he’s watching her. “I’m counting on you not to tell anyone that I forgot about water, okay? Do you promise?” Frumpkin purrs at her, and Jester nods solemnly. “Okay, it’s a deal. You can have half a bear claw.”

It takes her a while, switching bites of bear claw with swigs of water from her canteen, and eventually Frumpkin gets bored of picking up bits of pastry off the floor where she throws them. He sets off exploring the tavern, and Jester hugs he knees to her chest, watching him. 

“Are  _ you  _ going to tell me what Caleb was thinking, hmm?” she asks, watching as Frumpkin lifts his head to sniff at the air.  _ Father and mother, I hope I do not let you down _ **.** “I'm sure he tells you  _ everything _ .”

“I do not tell him anything at all, actually.” 

Jester shrieks and twists around in her seat, searching for the sound. “Caleb!”

“Frumpkin is a cat,” he tells her. He's standing in the doorway in his grubby white undershirt, hanging loose and unbelted over his pants; he’s rolled them up over his ankles, two pale feet sticking out from the ends.

“Yes, I know that, Caleb,” Jester rolls her eyes, glancing away. “Lots of people talk to animals, you know.”

“I do not,” he says simply. He's still just  _ standing there _ . “It would be totally useless.”

Jester snorts. “Liar,” she says, grinning when his lips twitch. “I've seen you telling him what to do.”

“Ja, well.” Caleb shrugs, leaning against the doorframe. “Sometimes it is helpful to say things out loud before you do them, so everyone is on the same page and there are no misunderstandings.” He pauses, and Jester could swear his mind is being drawn to the same place hers is, the horrible moment when everything had gone wrong and Fjord had _fallen -_ “Fewer misunderstandings.”

Jester giggles, and Caleb smiles at her. 

“Could you not sleep either?” When he shakes his head, she holds out her bear claw. “Would you like to share this?”

“I…” He prepares to say no, his hands already coming up in an apologetic gesture and his chin pointing vaguely in the direction of the stairs; Jester rests her chin on her hands and blinks up at him. Caleb smiles. “Sure, why not.”

He comes over to join her at the table, bare feet pale in the dark. Jester swallows, her thoughts flitting inexplicably to Oskar and Guinevere and then  _ sharply  _ skittering away again.

“Here,” she says, voice too loud in the silent room as she breaks the pastry in half. “Eat up.” 

Caleb eyes his bear claw suspiciously. “Jester, this is…” He takes a bite, and instantly pulls a face. “Very,  _ very _ stale.”

“Water,” Jester says brightly, offering him her canteen. “You have to, like, soften it up a bit first.” Caleb stares at her for so long that Jester can feel her cheeks begin to heat up. *What?”

“Jester… Are these still the pastries from the Tri-Spires that day?”

“The day when you took me to look at porn,” Jester nods, smirking when she sees him clench his jaw. “Yes “

“I did not  _ take you to -  _ never mind,” he says, and Jester has to bite her lip to keep from smiling too wide. “That was days ago, though. You can buy yourself fresh pastries every day if you like, you don't have to keep carrying those around."

“No, I know, I just…” Jester draws her knees up to her chest again, her fingers making little circles and swirls in the sugar and cinnamon now dusting the table between them. “Well they put the cinnamon on them like they do at home in Nicodranas, and you got them for me even though you, like,  _ just  _ gave me all your money, and that was really nice of you,, and I don't know, I didn't want to throw them out, that's all!”

Jester sweeps her hand across the table, sends sugar into Caleb's lap. She keeps her eyes fixed on her knees, one hand coming up to twist a strand of hair around and around.

“Jester…” Well, if she wasn't looking at him before then she's definitely not looking at him  _ now _ , not when his voice is doing something funny and warm, not when she can practically  _ feel  _ him looking at her, head turned slightly to one side like Frumpkin was before. “All right.”

Jester hears him take another bite, hears a gulp of water and then the faint  _ tink  _ as he sets her canteen down again. When she's pretty sure he's too busy chewing week-old bear claw to look at her, she raises her eyes.

_ Motherfucker. _

Caleb is looking directly at her; their eyes catch, and hold. He swallows, licks his lips; Jester scowls at him, and he laughs. “What is it now?”

“Stop _staring_ ,” Jester says primly, curling her fingers tight around her knees. “It's not polite.”

“You are very funny.”

“I know.”

He sighs, and Jester giggles; already, the air around them feels ten times lighter.

“You know, this is actually reminding me a little bit of something I read,” Caleb says casually.

_ Guinevere felt herself tremble with desire as she watched - _

Jester clears her throat. “Yes, Caleb?” _Fuck,_ she sounds fucking breathy. She clears her throat again, and aims for something deeper. “I mean, yes? What all was in those research notes, anyway?”

“Nothing like this,” Caleb says, waiting patiently as Jester coughs again. “No, it was in the book you gave me, actually.”

Jester chokes back a laugh, and teaches for the canteen. Drinks deeply. “Really?”

“Ja, the assassin would meet the general in the dead of night, in secret. They had code names, they stayed in taverns where no one knew who they were. And then she would sneak down, in her night clothes…” Jester folds her arms over her chest, pulling her flimsy dress tighter around herself. “And they would share…” Caleb pauses, and Jester thinks she can see a tell-tale hint of laughter hiding behind his eyes. “State secrets.””

“Caleb Widogast,” Jester says slowly, willing her voice to remain even for just a little while longer. “I believe you are fucking with me.”

“I would never fuck with you, Jester Lavorre,” he says, so solemn and straight-faced that it almost catches her out. “You know we don't have your sense of humour in Rexxentrum, maybe it is just getting lost in translation.”

Jester can't help it; she laughs out loud, burying her face in her knees and feeling her tail lash out to hit the table leg.  _ Ow, fuck. _

The thought  _ Caleb is funny  _ jumps to the forefront of her mind first, and it’s like all his quiet asides and straight-faced retorts are being rewritten in hindsight. When she looks up, it’s to find him still watching her with a small half-smile, and then the thought  _ Caleb is still looking at me  _ presents itself to her, and if Jester probes at that thought she can sense something else, waiting just below the surface. Something more difficult to define, something more like - 

“We should play cards,” she half-yells, so loud that she actually sees him flinch backwards. “Will you play cards? Here, I’ll deal.”

She grabs the deck of cards from her satchel, flings three cards at Caleb without making eye contact and picks three up for herself. The flimsy pieces of paper are shaking slightly when she raises her hand to look at them, the  _ fucking traitors. _

“All right,” he says quietly, eyes scanning his cards quickly. “What’s the buy-in?”

Jester tosses her hair out of her eyes, impatient. “Who cares, fifty gold.”

“ _ Fifty  _ \- ” He stops, catches the grin tugging at her lips. “Okay, so that was another funny Jester joke. I’ll play for three silver, how is that?”

“FIne, we can be boring,” she says cheerfully, and they start to play.

Three rounds later, they’ve raised the stakes to two gold pieces, four silver, and a solemn vow to call Beau pretty to her face (Caleb) or take Yasha in an arm-wrestle (Jester).

“That’s not a very good forfeit,  _ Caleb,” _ Jester says casually, biting her lip as she studies her cards.  _ Yes.  _ “I would do that any day, and I will probably win, you know.”

“Mmh,” Caleb hums, half-listening, his eyes drifting slightly off-centre from his hand of cards. “Yes, you probably will.”

Jester frowns at him. Okay, so maybe he was actually full-listening, and again it’s like she’s missed a step coming down the stairs, her centre of gravity tilting for an instant, and then she blinks and it passes, and she sets her cards down. “All right, I’m calling.”

Caleb sets his cards down on the table and leans back in his chair, waiting. Jester grins.

“I have got…” she leans forwards, savoring the moment, waiting until he’s sitting back upright and watching her intently before turning over her three threes. “A  _ mighty nine!” _

There is a slight pause, and then - he doesn't even  _ laugh,  _ the fucker - Caleb nods his head. “Nice, that’s very nice, Jester, well played.” Jester beams at him, and starts pulling the coins towards her. “However - “ he holds up his hand, waits for her to stop. “I see your one mighty nine, and raise you….”

He has three nines.

“ _ Arschloch _ ,” Jester hisses, and she sees his shoulders tense, a little startled. “What? Zemnians came to see the Ruby of the Sea all the time, I know all your words.”

“Sure you do,  _ vergissmeinnicht _ ,” Caleb says with another half-smile, and when Jester stares blankly at him, he shrugs, starts collecting his spoils. “Flowers. They’re blue.”

_ Ugh. _

“Big deal, I get to fight Yasha,” Jester says, puffing her cheeks out in mock-disappointment. “What a mean boy you are.”

“Mean boy,” Caleb laughs quietly, somewhere between exasperated and amused, some place very  _ warm  _ and  _ low  _ and  _ fond _ , and Jester feels her cheeks flame with colour.

“I think you were very lucky tonight, Caleb,” she says after a moment, when she’s sure she can trust her own voice again. “I think you were, like,  _ really, really lucky. _ ”

Caleb frowns at her. “The fragment of possibility? You think I want to win cards against you that badly?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Jester says. “You can probably just use it again tomorrow, it’s not like the others know about it yet, except for Nott, and she’ll just make you use it all the time, anyway.”

Caleb smiles. “Nott won’t - ”

“I will bet you all of that gold you are holding right now that Nott is going to give you her day using the beacon,” Jester says quickly, and Caleb laughs.

“I will not take that bet,” he tells her. “I may have been lucky tonight, but I am not stupid.”

“No,” Jester says quietly. “No, I think you’re really smart, actually.” 

Caleb blinks at her. “Ja?”

_ “Ja, Caleb,” _ she says, bringing her knees up to her chest again and letting her chin rest on the hem of her dress. “Can I ask you something? One really, really smart person to another?”

“Oh, I’m really,  _ really  _ smart now, am I?” Caleb asks, with a weak laugh; Jester just fixes him with her eyes. “Sure. Sure.”

“What did you think the beacon was going to do?”

“Jester…”

“You said something about your parents,” Jester says, keeping her voice low, encouraging. “Did you think it was going to do something with your....” She hesitates, all at once aware again of just how little of himself Caleb has let show. “Like in bringing them back, or talking to them, or…?”

“Choices,” Caleb says, blinking under the intensity of Jester’s gaze but not looking away. “I saw many Calebs, many…possibilities. I thought it might, I don’t know...”

“You have choices you would make differently?”

He gives her a tiny, sad smile. “Don’t we all?”

Jester doesn’t say anything to that; doesn’t ask him any more questions, although she does  _ really want to ask -  _

She just looks back at him, her eyes fixed on his. 

“We should probably go to sleep,” Caleb says after a while, and she nods.

“Probably.”

Neither of them move.

“You know, Frumpkin doesn’t need to be eating your pastries,” Caleb says, clearing his throat and leaning back in his chair; Jester blinks a few times, flicks her tail across the floorboards. She’s a little lightheaded; maybe going to sleep isn’t a bad idea. “And you  _ definitely  _ do not need to be drinking leftover honey wine.”

Jester frowns at hm, then down at Frumpkin, rubbing up against her tail behind her chair. _ Ohhh. Right.  _

“You were watching,” she says, grinning when he holds up his hands in surrender. “That was you pushing me towards the basin.”

“Sometimes if he goes exploring at night,” Caleb shrugs, getting to his feet and holding out one hand to help her up. “I like to check in on him. Usually I get very pleasant views of shit on the street. One time he was hunting a pigeon.”

Jester wrinkles her nose. “Poor pigeon.”

“Poor  _ Caleb, _ ” Caleb shudders, and she giggles. “No, you were....a definite improvement, Jester.”

“You’re so good with words,” Jester snorts, making a half-hearted attempt to pull her hand out of his; he keeps holding on to it, though, and she grins up at him. “An improvement on a dead pigeon, okay.” 

“I didn’t - ” he starts, already exasperated; Jester cuts him off with a smiling shake of her head. 

“I did think he was being especially bossy,” she says, and Caleb ducks his head. It’s...strangely touching, actually, so she’ll let the _ pigeon thing  _ slide. “Trying  _ real hard  _ to get me to drink some water.”

“Ja, well,” he shrugs, and leaves it at that. “Thank you for the pastry.”

“Thank you for the card game,” Jester grins. “Even if it really isn’t fair to be gambling when you have luck on your side, you know.”

He turns her hand over in his, eyes scanning her palm. His hand looks ghostly white next to her deep blue, and Jester thinks absentmindedly that it looks sort of nice. Even if he does need to clean under his fingernails. 

“You’ve a lucky lifeline, right here,” Caleb says slowly, thumb grazing over her skin. Jester swallows. “So I guess that makes us even, right?”

“Right,” she says quietly.

They stand there for a moment longer, his thumb curled into her skin. Jester thinks vaguely about chance encounters, about luck leading her to Trostenwald. She thinks about the Mighty Nein, Beau and Yasha and Molly and Fjord and Nott and this...strange, sad man from Zemnia who is holding her hand and who is  _ funny, _ surprisingly funny, and kind.

And then Frumpkin stands on her tail, and Jester has to keep both hands clapped over her mouth to muffle her laughter long after they’ve made their way upstairs, Caleb disappearing into his and Nott’s room with a whispered “Sleep well,” and another half-smile in the dark. 

Jester lies down as quietly as she can next to Beau, and stares up at the ceiling. She feels strangely alert, strangely  _ awake, _ heart beating loud in her chest and a last hiccup of laughter making its way past her lips. She’ll go to sleep soon, when her pulse calms down and her hands stop tingling. 

She’s going to go to sleep, and tomorrow morning at breakfast she’s going to tell Caleb about the bit of pastry that will hopefully still be stuck to the dimple in his nose. And it is going to be  _ so. Fucking. Good. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated, and I will PROBABLY be back in a few episodes' time for another OFFERING. Hope you're all staying strong up there in the Episode 55 times, I hear it's awesome.


End file.
